Subtitling · Dari
Dari subtitling services
Native Dari subtitlers for corporate video, eLearning, documentary, broadcast and advertising. Delivered in a format that carries the reading direction inside the file itself. Part of a full Dari language service: subtitles, voice over scripts, and translation of any content you need.
About Dari subtitling
Right to left is a delivery decision, not a rendering accident
Dari is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, written in the Persian alphabet and read right to left. That last fact usually gets treated as a display problem, something the player sorts out once the file lands. It is not. For right-to-left content the delivery format decides the outcome, and that decision is taken long before anyone presses play.
The platforms are explicit about it. Netflix does not accept EBU STL files for right-to-left languages and asks for TTML instead, with the direction stated inside the document rather than inferred from the text. A legacy binary broadcast file has nowhere to put that instruction, so the information never reaches the other end.
At GoLocalise we work with native Dari subtitlers, settle the delivery format before a single line is timed, and write the direction into the file rather than hoping the player guesses right. The digits go in the same way, in the set an Afghan audience reads, and the finished file is opened and checked before it leaves us.
Which do you need?
Open captions, closed captions or SDH
Three different deliverables that people often ask for by the wrong name. Here is the short version.
Open captions
Burnt inSubtitles burnt permanently into the picture. Nobody can switch them off, which is exactly what you want for social feeds that autoplay muted — and in Dari it settles the direction at delivery, leaving the player nothing to interpret.
- Always visible
- Reading direction fixed at delivery
- Delivered as a finished video file
Closed captions
SwitchableA separate file the viewer can turn on and off, and that can carry several languages at once. The standard for YouTube, Vimeo and the streaming platforms.
- Viewer controls them
- Multiple languages from one video
- Indexed by search engines
SDH
AccessibilitySubtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing: dialogue plus speaker IDs and the sound effects and music cues that carry meaning.
- Speaker identification
- Non-dialogue audio described
- Meets accessibility requirements
Subtitles or captions? The two terms are often used interchangeably. Strictly, subtitles translate the dialogue for viewers who can hear the audio, while captions are same-language and add speaker labels and sound cues for viewers who cannot. We produce either — translated Dari subtitles or same-language Dari captions and SDH — in whichever form your platform and audience require.
What we subtitle
Dari subtitling for every kind of content
Dari work reaches us from broadcasters, NGOs, development agencies and diaspora media, and each one arrives with its own delivery spec for right-to-left text. These are the project types we handle most.
Corporate & training video
Internal comms, onboarding and product training subtitled for global teams and LMS delivery.
eLearning & online courses
Timed, readable subtitles for course platforms, MOOCs and instructional video.
Documentary & factual
Festival, broadcast and streaming documentaries, including interview clean-up and on-screen text.
Advertising & social
Burnt-in captions for muted autoplay on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and paid social.
Streaming & OTT
Platform-spec subtitle and caption files for VOD, OTT and broadcast delivery.
Accessibility (SDH & closed captions)
Same-language SDH and closed captions to meet WCAG and accessibility requirements.
Events, webinars & conferences
Recorded talks, town halls and webinars captioned for on-demand viewing.
E-commerce & product video
Short product and explainer videos captioned to lift conversion and reach.
How can we help you?
Your project manager has everything covered
One point of contact from brief to delivery, and both a linguistic and a technical check on every file.
Brief review
We review your video, your audience and the delivery spec, starting with which subtitle format the destination accepts for right-to-left text.
Template and translation
Where needed, we create an English subtitle template first, then send it to a native Dari subtitler.
Timing and quality checks
Subtitles are timed against the video and checked for reading speed, line length, the direction declared on every event, and format compliance.
Delivery and display check
Files delivered in the format you need, with the direction declaration and the digit set confirmed on the destination player rather than assumed.
Our standards
The specs we work to
Readable subtitles are a matter of measurable limits, not opinion. These are the defaults we apply to Dari unless your style guide says otherwise.
Maximum per line
Our default, pending Dari validation
Maximum on screen
Right to left, bottom-weighted
Reading speed
Lower on children's titles
Minimum duration
Seven seconds maximum
No major platform publishes a timed text style guide for Dari, so the four figures above are our working defaults rather than a standard we can point you at, and we treat them as provisional on any job that arrives with its own spec. What is not provisional is the delivery side: the format the destination accepts for right-to-left text, and the direction declaration inside it. Those two are agreed in writing before timing starts.
Deliverables
Professional subtitle formats
We adapt your existing translations into subtitle format or create subtitles from scratch, in Dari, English or any other language. And if the project needs a timed script or a plain document instead, we deliver that too.
Standard text-based
Compatible with most platforms and players.
Broadcast & professional
For broadcasters, post houses and streaming delivery specs.
Burnt-in video
A finished file with the subtitles baked into the picture, direction and digits included.
Need a different format? Convert SRT, VTT and more with our free subtitle converter →
| Where it's going | What we deliver |
|---|---|
| YouTube, Vimeo & LMS platforms | SRT or VTT closed captions |
| Netflix, Amazon & broadcast | IMSC, TTML or EBU-STL to platform spec |
| Instagram, TikTok & paid social | Burned-in captions in MP4 (open captions) |
| Premiere, Final Cut & DaVinci Resolve | SRT / VTT that import straight into your edit |
Not sure which you need? Tell us the destination platform and we deliver to its exact spec.
Dari specifics
The two things that have to be written into the file
There are three places the direction is allowed to live, and each of them is spelled out: writingMode on the region, tts:direction on every paragraph or span, or tts:direction in a style that each event then references. The word doing the work in all three is *every*. A TTML document that declares the direction once, or not at all, is a document whose appearance depends on where it is opened — which is the failure the requirement exists to stop.
The second thing is the figures. Dari takes the extended Arabic-Indic digits at U+06F0 to U+06F9, drawn differently from the Arabic-Indic set at U+0660 that most of the Arab world uses, and differently again from Latin numerals. The distinction reaches past appearance: Unicode classes U+06F0 to U+06F9 as European Number and U+0660 to U+0669 as Arabic Number, so two digit sets that look like cousins are laid out differently inside the same line.
Dari is official in Afghanistan alongside Pashto under the 2004 constitution, with around 15 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 28th edition), and it works as the country's lingua franca well beyond that. It is a standard form of the same language written in Iran, but vocabulary, register and what an audience expects to hear differ enough that work aimed at Kabul is cast for Kabul from the start.
Since 2008
Subtitling & captioning
100+
Languages covered
ISO 9001 & 14001
Certified processes
24–48h
Typical turnaround
Subtitling rates
Professional Dari subtitling
For single videos and straightforward content where accurate, well-timed subtitles are what you need.
- Native Dari subtitler
- Direction declared in the file
- Frame-accurate timing
For longer content and recurring projects, including transcription, SDH, burned-in subtitles and multiple output formats.
- Everything in Standard
- Transcription and template
- SDH and burnt-in
- Multiple output formats
Every project is quoted individually and backed by our Price Match Promise. Send us your video for an exact, no-obligation quote.
Trusted by global brands
We have used GoLocalise on a regular basis for projects in a number of languages. The service we receive is great. The team is always friendly and professional. The voiceovers we receive are of a very high quality and the turnaround is extremely quick. We are very happy to recommend GoLocalise to other businesses.
It was a pleasure to work with David and the team at GoLocalise. David gave me lots of help and advice, guiding me through my first subtitling project. He really knows his stuff! The experience was completely pain-free. I would not hesitate to recommend GoLocalise – outstanding work at a good price.
They're reliable, adaptive and obsessed with quality. And while you can never be 100% guaranteed of perfection, you can be sure GoLocalise will go the extra mile to get it right every time. We've worked with them now for over 5 years and we are truly thankful to have such a strong localisation partner for our business.
Related services
The rest of your Dari project
Subtitling & captioning in more languages
Native subtitlers for corporate video, eLearning, streaming, documentary and advertising. Browse another language, or ask us about yours.
Most common questions
Our broadcaster rejected the Dari STL file. Why?
Because the format cannot carry what a right-to-left language needs. Netflix, for one, does not accept EBU STL for right-to-left languages and asks for TTML instead. STL is a binary broadcast file with a code table in its header and no slot for a direction instruction, so the reading order has to be reconstructed at the far end by software that may not agree with yours. We deliver timed text that states it.
How is the reading direction declared in a Dari subtitle file?
Explicitly, in one of three accepted places: writingMode on the region, tts:direction on each paragraph or span, or tts:direction in a style that every event references. The common thread is that it applies to every subtitle event, not once at the top of the document. We pick the method your platform's spec names and keep it consistent through the file.
Should the numbers in Dari subtitles be Persian or Latin digits?
Worth deciding at the brief, because it applies to the whole file. Dari uses the extended Arabic-Indic digits at U+06F0 to U+06F9, which are not the Arabic-Indic set used across most of the Arab world and are not Latin figures either. Broadcast and public-information work usually wants the Persian forms; technical material often keeps Latin digits to match on-screen graphics.
Is Dari the same as Farsi, and can one file serve both?
They are standard forms of one language and an Afghan audience will follow an Iranian file, but they are not one commission. Vocabulary, idiom and the register a broadcaster expects all differ, and viewers hear it immediately. We cast an Afghan subtitler for Afghanistan, and where a project has to reach both countries we quote the two versions separately.
What does Dari subtitling cost per minute?
Dari subtitling is priced per minute of video, from £20. The drivers are running time, whether the Dari audio needs transcribing first, whether you want SDH or a burnt-in master, and how many formats leave with the job. The right-to-left delivery checks are part of the work rather than a line item on top. Every job is quoted individually with our Price Match Promise.
The audio is already in Dari. Will you caption it without translating?
Yes, and a good share of our Dari work is exactly that. Afghan-language footage gets a same-language caption file, SDH included, in a format that carries the direction properly so it behaves the same on every platform you publish to. Accessibility teams and muted social feeds both need this version, and it sits alongside translated subtitles rather than replacing them.
I already have a Dari SRT. Can you time it to my video?
Send it across. We cue it to picture, condense any line that would overrun, and convert it into whatever your platform actually accepts for right-to-left delivery — an SRT carries no direction information at all, so it is often the point where an inherited file starts behaving differently from one player to the next. Where no transcript exists, we transcribe the Dari audio first.
Will your Dari files open in my editing suite?
Yes. We deliver SRT, VTT, STL and TTML into Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve and the major online editors, and we tell you which of them is the safe one to hand on for right-to-left delivery. Where an edit suite is the last stop before publication, burnt-in MP4 or MOV removes the question altogether.
Ready to subtitle your video in Dari?
Send us your video and we'll come back with an exact, itemised quote.
Worth reading before you brief
Subtitling
What is closed captioning? Difference from subtitles
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Voice over
- State-of-the-art studios
- Neumann microphones
- On-hand sound engineers
- 1,000+ voice actors
Translation
- 100+ languages covered
- Tailored to your needs
- Stringent quality control
- Dedicated project managers
Subtitling
- Experienced subtitlers
- Industry-standard software
- Burn-in and graphic editing
- Open and closed captions
Transcription
- Improve accessibility
- Reach a wider audience
- Boost SEO and video views
- Maximise video engagement